Alan Norris

For Queen, Oil and Country

Synopsis

Author Biography

Alan was born in Poole, Dorset, England on October 1st 1948. As a child, he lived in Canada for a few years in what was then a tiny settlement village called Malton in Ontario. He went to his first school in the village, a one-room school that was quite basic but typical of the time in those outlying areas of the Canadian countryside.
Later in life he travelled to Western Australia where he worked as a design draughtsman and played drums in his spare time with a very active band called “Unicorn”.
Eventually, Alan returned to England, where he found a winter season of high unemployment and a frosty cold that he'd forgotten about. After a couple of dead-end jobs he joined the Royal Navy and quickly worked his way up to become an engine room Chief Petty Officer.
Alan now lives with his wife Stella in a quiet part of Western France, surrounded by books, forests, fields and their precious dogs, Elsa, Jester and Monty.
He still plays drums occasionally too.

Author Insight

For that coffee moment

For Queen, Oil and Country
This is an eclectic collection of short, and not-so-short stories, that I have written over the past years. Most of them are complete fiction, with perhaps their locality being the only anchor in reality. Others are of an autobiographical nature and I hope these will be obvious to you, the reader, as you come across them.
Several of these short stories will form the basis for longer works and one, The Hunter, has already become a full length novel and in the writing, it produced a seed that became the “William Blake” series of books.

Book Excerpt

For Queen, Oil and Country

It was springtime in 1982 and, as part of a strike task-force, we were steaming south to the Falkland Islands. The ship was the HMS Argonaut an ageing, but reliable Royal Navy Leander Frigate.

Argentina had invaded the Falkland island group. Many of the lads in the crew were openly patriotic and excited by the prospect of going to battle on behalf of their Queen, to defend the Country’s honour. But a minority, perhaps only a cynical few, knew that the colony represented the British Government’s, unquestionable right to claim a share of the known oil deposits locked beneath the Antarctic regions.